Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Translator and author Basil Balian
read the full story of ‘Rocambole’
by Ponson du Terrail (1829-71) when
he was an adolescent and then waited for fifty years for someone to translate
it into English. When no one did, he embarked on a three volume adaptation of
the story. Volume 2 – Redemption is
now in print. Volumes 1 and 2 are available through Amazon HERE.

The work is an adaptation because it differs in the details from the
complex and convoluted original story. Balian tried to simplify it for today’s
readers but still kept most all of the major plots of the original story.

Ponson du Terrail’s great criminal mastermind Rocambole was introduced in
France in La Patrie in 1859, in a
newspaper feuilleton called ‘Les drames
de Paris’ that has remained in print to this day.

Monday, November 19, 2012

HERE are the pages 54 to 6o with the ‘John Proctor’ chapter from ‘Humorists of the Pencil’ by Sir John Alexander Hammerton, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905. (Punch published a series of books called ‘Humorists of the Pencil’ between 1900 and 1915 as well.) Article images courtesy of Allan Proctor Gray.

One of the best old boys’
periodicals, read by both sexes, old and young alike, was the famous “Young
Folks’ Weekly Budget,” published by Mr. J. Henderson at Red Lion House, Red
Lion Court, Fleet Street.

No. 1 was published on a Monday
in January, 1871, and consisted of eight pages of the unusual size, 12½ in. by
9 in. The price was a halfpenny, and
remained so up to No. 106, Vol. 3, January 22, 1873, when the journal was
enlarged to sixteen pages and the price raised to one penny. The title up to No. 288, Vol. 8, June 24,
1876, was “Our Young Folks’ Weekly Budget,” and better paper was used, the
general “get-up” being superior to the earlier volumes. The size of the sheets was altered to 14 in.
by 9½ in., and in this form the periodical ran to No. 447, Vol. 14, June 28,
1879, when the title was again altered to “Young Folks.” With No. 500, Vol. 17, July 3, 1880, the
sheets were again enlarged to 16½ inches by 11½ inches, and continued in this
form and title to No. 733, Vol. 24, December 20, 1884, when the journal was
again altered to “The Young Folks’ Paper,” and ran to No. 1074, Vol. 38, June
27, 1891. On the back page an
announcement appeared as follow:
“Special to our Readers.—Further development of ‘Young Folks’
Paper,’—Change of title, on and after next week, to ‘Old and Young,’ a high-class
Magazine for all readers.”

Under this new title it ran
from No. 1075, Vol. 39, July 4, 1891, to No. 1353, Vol. 49, September 11, 1896,
when it was discontinued.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

1 [1892] Cover of the first issue of The Inter Ocean
Illustrated Supplement, ‘Grover Cleveland,’ June 23.

by Richard Samuel West

Comicstrip historians credit H.H. Kohlsaat as the
grandfather of the Sunday comic supplement. Though he was not involved in the launch of the Sunday comic supplement,
his brainchild — The Inter Ocean
Illustrated Supplement — inspired it. Kohlsaat was in his late forties when he bought a controlling interest
in the Chicago based Inter Ocean newspaper
in 1891. The son of German and English
immigrants, he had made his money in the bakery trade. As a life-long Republican, he wanted to use
his wealth to influence national affairs and, especially, to push the political
prospects of William McKinley of Ohio, who had recently lost his House seat but
was maneuvering to run for governor of his home state and had his eye on the
presidency.

2 [1892] Explanatory article in the first issue, ‘An
American Color Bearer,’ June 23.

Prior to taking control of TheInter Ocean in Chicago Kolhsaat had traveled
to Europe where he learned that the widely read Paris daily Le Petit Journal was issuing an illustrated
weekly supplement in color, something he had never seen before. Sure, he was familiar with Puck and Judge and Chicago’s Light,
all of whom sported full color lithographs in each weekly issue, but this
newspaper supplement was different — its color was produced mechanically on a
perfecting press, a press that prints on both sides of the paper at once —
which made it more efficient and less expensive than chromolithography. Kohlsaat was intrigued by the supplement and
the printing process. He sought out the
inventor of the press, one of the owners of the Journal, Hippolyte Maranoni, and ordered one for the offices of TheInter Ocean.

On Thursday, June 23, 1892, Kohlsaat launched TheInter Ocean Illustrated Supplement, an
eight page tabloid sporting a full color front and back cover, with news
features, fiction, and miscellany filling up the black and white interior. It was the first color newspaper Supplement
issued in America. In the early issues,
the color was a bit grainy and pallid. The
illustrations were prosaic, mainly portraits of men in the news, street scenes,
or buildings, usually drawn by Charles O. Jones of the Inter Ocean art
department. In September of ’92, however,
the Illustrated Supplement took on
renewed vigor.

Art Young, a Midwesterner
who had come to Chicago in 1884 to study at the arts student league, had jumped
from one Chicago daily to another during the latter half of the 1880s. After a stint in Paris, he returned to his
adopted city and began working for the Inter
Ocean at the beginning of 1892. He was
the paper’s daily political cartoonist. With the September 4 issue, he began contributing political cartoons to
the back covers of the Illustrated Supplement
and then caricature portraits to the front covers.

7-8 [1892] Left: October 30, ‘Defeat,’cover illustrated by
Art Young. Right: October 30, JOHN BULL – “I say, Uncle Sam, how you
have grown. Is it PROTECTION?” U.S. – “Well, I should smile.” Illustrated by
Thomas Nast.

In October, during the homestretch of the
1892 presidential campaign, he was joined briefly by Thomas Nast, usually with
Young drawing the cover art and Nast contributing a cartoon to the back. Nast had come to Chicago at Kohlsaat’s
request to judge a contest to select the best graphic representation of the
city of Chicago. From then on, his work
appeared sporadically in the pages of TheInter
Ocean. (In 1894, Kohlsaat
commissioned Nast to paint what has become his best known oil painting, “Peace in Union” which depicts Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Kolhsaat paid Nast $10,000 for the painting
and then donated it to his hometown library in Galena, Illinois, also the hometown
of Ulysses S. Grant.)

Of course the big event in Chicago during this period was
the World’s Columbian Exposition, which though originally scheduled for 1892,
was delayed a year and ran from May to October of 1893. From June 1892 through April 1893, the Illustrated Supplement almost always accompanied
the Sunday paper, but in a few instances it was issued on another day
instead. With the advent of the Fair,
the Illustrated Supplement stepped up
publication to twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays. Young continued as the main artist for the supplement
with assistance from another art department staffer named Williamson. In July, TheInter Ocean hired Charles Saalburg, formerly of the San Francisco Wasp, to head the art department;
he also became a major contributor to the Illustrated
Supplement. Saalburg’s polished work
was a nice compliment to Young’s homegrown efforts and Williamson’s
illustrations.

11-12 [1893] Left: April 16, ‘A Few Old Sketches Re-Touched,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast. Right: April 30 front cover, ‘I Will
be Queen of the May,’ illustrated by Thomas Nast.

TheIllustrated Supplement
created something of a sensation in the newspaper publishing world. In May of 1893, The World in New York, inspired by Kohlsaat’s innovation, brought out the
first color comic supplement, using the same press model Kohlsaat had imported
from Europe. After the fair ended in
October, the Illustrated Supplement
returned to a Sunday-only publishing schedule. Though it was downsized at the end of the year, it contained the same
amount of color because an interior doublespread was added.

Kohlsaat, Young, and Saalburg all left The Inter Ocean in 1894. Kohlsaat sold out his interest in the paper and moved on to other projects (though he
bought back the Inter Ocean nearly
twenty years later). Young eventually
made his way to New York and enjoyed fifty more active years in the
profession. At Pulitzer’s invitation, Saalburg
became head of The World’s
art department in New York. He went on to a long
career in pictorial journalism and was a highly respected printing arts
technician, eventually even patenting several color printing processes.

16-17[1893] Left: November 21 cover, ‘Our Uncle
Grover – As Usual, the Inter Ocean Was Right.’ Right: December 17 cover, ‘The Song That Did (Not) Reach His Heart.’Both illustrated by Charles Saalburg.

No one has determined the exact date that the Illustrated Supplement was
discontinued. I have an Inter Ocean Illustrated Supplement from
1900, but it does not contain any original art (just reprinted cartoons from Judge) and I have been unable to
determine whether or not the title was published continuously during the
intervening years. Reprinted here is a
generous sampling of cover art from this pioneering publication.

18 [1894] January 7, Front plus back-cover sheet,

‘The
Modern Paul and Virginia’ and ‘Looking

Backward,’ both illustrated by Charles
Saalburg.

Please note that the final image reads 1893 on the

title bar of the
issue itself, but it’s actually from

1894 (the issue was misdated when
published).

Richard West’s new book ‘Iconoclast in Ink; The Political Cartoons of Jay N. “Ding” Darling’ can be purchased HERE.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

The melodramatic article “Origin
of “Blues” (or Jazz)” is well known to blues scholars
but one that is rarely commented upon. The article appeared shortly after the
first commercial blues song ‘Crazy Blues’ was recorded by Mamie Smith and her
Jazz Hounds on August 10, 1920.

[1921] Mamie Smith

The Leightons, authors of the article, began as a pair of minstrels who
performed in blackface to the accompaniment of guitar and banjo before moving
on to composing Tin Pan Alley songs performed on record by themselves and
others. They might be better described as song-hunters than composers because
almost all their songs, as was the practice of the time, were bought cheaply,
or outright stolen, from naive black and white singers and copyrighted, a business matter
Tin Pan Alley regarded as unremarkable. Perry Bradford, composer and pianist on
‘Crazy Blues,’ spent much of his time fighting lawsuits in copyright court.

Bert and Frank Leighton

The people, stories and songs mentioned in the
article deserve a closer look so I have transcribed the original and added my
own thoughts, notes and explorations [within] the text. “Burt” Leighton appears
in most other historical sources as “Bert.”

[1917] A New York Jazz Band, August 25.

ORIGIN OF “BLUES” (OR JAZZ) by The Leightons (Frank and
Burt)

From Variety, Friday, Jan 26, 1922.

In Butte, Montana, when life was harsh, spectacular,
percussive, uncertain, two boys climbed to the cinders from the rods beneath a
freight car. They were explorers. The equipment they packed consisted of a
guitar and a banjo. They were pushing deep into the forbidden regions of the
underworld, then flourishing in every American city and, while making a flighty
living as troubadours from bar to bar, from dive to dive, were collecting
material which gives the clue to the original sources of the jazz wave now rippling
over the world.

[According to ‘Monarchs of Minstrelsy’ (1911) James
Albert “Bert” Leighton was born in Altamont, Illinois December 29, 1878 and
joined Barlow Brothers Minstrels August 21, 1899. He died at San Francisco on
February 10, 1964. Frank Leighton was born April 14, 1880 near Cowden, Illinois
and began his career as a blackface performer in a medicine show on June 1,
1897 and toured with Burt Sheppard’s Minstrels (1898) and Vogel and Deming’s
Minstrels (1899). Leighton and Leighton made their first appearance together at
Poughkeepsie, New York on December 8, 1900. In 1903 the pair toured with
Quinlan and Wall’s minstrels and in 1904 with Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels.

The Leighton Brothers first heard of the song
‘Casey Jones’ from their brother William, an engineer on the Illinois Central.
William heard it from Wallace ‘Wash’ Saunders, a Negro engine ‘wiper’ employed
by the same railroad, and passed the song along.

Compositions: ‘There’s a Dark
Man Coming with a Bundle’, Eb’ry Dollar Carries Trubbles Ob its Own,’ ‘The
Message of the Old Church Bell,’ ‘Ain’t Dat a Shame,’ and others.]

Butte received the wanderers well. The silver pieces that
flew into the caps of the strollers between numbers were of generous
proportions. For the songs the boys gave were songs native to the surroundings;
songs of the Mississippi river traffic, of the railroad, of the mines and the
cattle ranges. Not one could have been printed. Their most pungent verses were
marred, according to accepted standards, by phrases of medieval frankness. What
our old ballads have lost in passing into print, these songs retained.

In a stuffy room, reeking and rattling with crude revelry,
the singers found an accompanist on the piano, a mulatto girl, hollow-eyed, who
turned her back on the throng at intervals to manipulate a hypodermic syringe
that flashed against the brown of her lean arm. With her, the two singers
hushed the racket with such choice outpourings of sentiment as:

Listen now white folks, while I
tell to you,

Coons without a habit are
mighty few;

Some have a habit of dressing
neat,

But my bad habit is to sleep
and eat.

I’ll tell all you coons you’ll
soon be dead,

If you don’t stop sniffin’ coke
in your head,

There’s two bad habits that I
have barred,

That’s fightin’ ‘bout the girls
an’ workin’ hard.

Chorus.

Oh, that is a habit I never
had,

That kind of a habit is mighty
bad.

I’m tellin’ you, white folks,
I’m mighty glad,

That is a habit I never had.

[You can listen to ‘That is a Habit I Never
Had’ by Billy Murray (1904) HERE. Bob Roberts also recorded the song.]

“Dell’s got a song of her own,” said the white proprietor,
“Let ‘em have it, Dell.”

The mulatto struck a minor chord and, in a husky soprano,
wistful and pain-fraught, she voiced the lament of the forsaken woman –

“I never loved but one woman’s
son,

Fare thee, honey, fare thee
well,

And I hope and trust I never
love another one,

Fare thee, honey, fare thee
well,

I worked out in the rain, I
worked out in the snow,

What all I done for that man
nobody will ever know,

He woke up one morning and skipped
with all my dough

An’ just said -- Fare thee,
honey, fare thee well.”

Chorus.

I done all that a poor ol’ gal
could do,

I fed him pork chops, cooked
him kidney stew;

I even knelt down on my knees
and blacked his shoe,

All for that man, that measly
man.”

That was the first time, or one of the first times, that the
Leighton Brothers conceived the idea of commercializing the pathetic
lamentation of the unfortunates of the underworld.

That was an origin of the blues, and the blending of the
blues and ragtime created the jazz now prevalent, although the authentic
composition, springing from the deeps of Negro woe in haunts of urban vice, is
seldom found in music shops.

[Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds, Georgia
White and Count Basie recorded “Fare Thee, Honey, Fare Thee Well.” Peter Muir, author of “Long Lost
Blues” sings the original version HERE.
The song is also known as “Dink’s Song,” and under that title was a favorite
during the sixties folk revival. Odetta, Kate and Anna McCarrigle, Cisco Houston, The Punch Brothers, Harry Belafonte, Dave van Ronk, and
Jeff Buckley all recorded the song. Bob Dylan sings it HERE.]

The explorers, Frank and Burt Leighton, now standard variety
artists, belonged to a group of American minstrels, most of whom died young
after going down into strange places to bring up the songs of Negro outcasts,
of cowboy, miner and gambler. The Negro was the true singer of that feverish
section of America. Before the Civil War the Negro population was rural. The
black man had his sorrows and his “spirituals” and jubilee songs were chants of
barbaric somberness. These are preserved intact. Some of the motives have been
ambitiously elaborated, but only a chorus of Negro voices can capture the
primitive swing and appeal of them.

After the war, the Negro quarters of industrial cities began
to grow. Black folks and yellow huddled in slumsand the child nature of many
succumbed to vice. It is only fair to state that the rag-time melody, which
Negro leaders are glad to have credited to their race, grew in lawless haunts.
The Negro lives at his worst with an abandon utterly lacking in white
debauchery. He never acquired the hard cynicism of the white sinner. He laughs,
loves, fights, gambles with an ardor the colder race cannot imitate. When the
outburst of hot animalism dies down, and the dicer has lost his last dime, the
gunman or the razor wielder is in a gaol cell, the lover and his mistress are
torn apart by jealousy or death, then the black man’s soul is overwhelmed with
grief which translates itself into song.

In Memphis a colored gambler lost his “high-yallow” girl to
a rival. He lured the lady back into his clutches and returned her to the new
love, dismembered and packed in a trunk. The lover, who beheld the handiwork of
outraged passion, ran screaming into the street, stark mad. The vengeful one
was caught, and while the gallows were being prepared for him, composed ‘The
Death House Blues,’ which he played on the piano in the sheriff’s home, and
sang with all his heart a few hours before the trap fell beneath his feet. The
song consisted of numerous verses on the order of the following:

“I’m sittin’ in the jailhouse
behind the stone wall,

And a brown-skinned gal was the
cause of it all;

In the morning at half-past
nine, hacks and hearses will form in line,

Friends and relations will
gather ‘round

To carry my body to the buryin’
ground.”

[One of the song-thieving Leighton Brothers
was probably in the audience at Death Row, pen in hand, and ready to rush the
song off to the song publishers while the body was still cold (I’m joking). ‘Death
House Blues’ was recorded by Bessie Smith and Margaret Johnson in the twenties.
Son House uses a similar motif in ‘Death Letter Blues.’ The song became
associated with the Scottsboro Boys in the thirties. Topical songs of protest, ‘The
Scottsboro Boys Shall Not Die,’ ‘Song for the Scottsboro Boys,’ and ‘'The Death
House Blues,’ were all written about a criminal case that made history. In 1938
New York’s Hall Johnson Choir, male and female, performed a song called
‘Scottsboro’ which contained the lyric “Paper come out, done strowed de news,
bout seven po’ chillun, done moan the Death House Blues.” – The Age, July 16,
1938.]

To one who has glimpsed the sources of jazz music, there is
always a shock to be received when some sweet young thing, tinkling the piano
in the sanctity of a good American Methodist home, sings:

“Won’t you come home, dear
daddy, please dear come home,

She cries the whole day long.

I’ll do the cookin’ honey, I’ll
pay the rent,

I know I’se done you wrong.

Remember that rainy evenin’ I
drove you out

With nothin’ but a fine tooth
comb,

I know I’se to blame, now ain’t
that a shame,

Dear daddy won’t you please
come home!”

She, or her mother, or her brother, or her chums, know the
real meaning of the words they carol.

[‘Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey.’
The song probably originated in a bar or brothel, with filthy lyrics, hence the
dire wink from the author. See further below.]

Billy Considine, famous in the sporting world, sat in
Hammerstein’s Victoria theatre, New York, and heard, for the first time, the
Leightons sing their sterilized version of “Frankie and Johnnie.”

“I held my breath,” he said afterward, “I thought you boys
had gone balmy, and I knew if you sang the real verses there would be a riot. I
laid ‘Betsy’ (his revolver) on my lap and figured I’d do my best to save you
from being mobbed.”

But Mr. Considine had no cause for alarm. The minstrel men
who discovered the coon song placed it on the market in strongly censored form.
“Frankie and Johnnie,” a standard ballad of dance halls and “joints” from coast
to coast, remained obscure to the polite world until published by the
Leightons. They have recorded more than 100 original stanzas of the ballad.
Versions and tunes are varied. How barren and how empty are the words in print
when once they have been heard to the sob and twang of a guitar, with a mixed
company of harmonists to join the refrain:

“He was my man, an’ he done me
wrong.”

Frankie she was a good girl,
most everybody here knows,

Went out and spent most a
hundred dollars for Johnnie’s new set of clothes,

‘Cause he was her man, but he
done her wrong.

Some of the conclusions of Frankie
and Johnnie are as follows:

Frankie
she dashed around the corner, peeped through a window so high,

There
she saw her lovin’ Johnnie makin’ love to Nelly Bly.

Oh Lord
my man, he’s doin’ me wrong.

***

Frankie
came back around the corner, this time it wasn’t for fun,

Underneath
her silk komono, she had a great big .44 gun.

Lookin’
for her man, ‘cause he done her wrong.

***

Johnnie
he ran down the hallway, cryin’ oh, Frankie, don’t shoot!

But
Frankie she fired her .44 gun five times with a rooti-toot-toot.

She
killed her man ‘cause he done her wrong.

***

The
judge he said unto Frankie, there ain’t no use to cry to me,

The
jury done brought in the verdict of murder in the first degree.

You
killed your man ‘cause he done her wrong.

Send
for the rubber-tired hearses, go get the rubber-tire hacks,

Take my
lovin’ Johnnie to the graveyard and never, never bring him back.

He was
my man, but he done me wrong.

The ballad in its reconstructed
shape is popular in Y.M.C.A. parlors. “Frankie and Johnnie” is a specimen of
the authentic coon song, and was taken from a true happening.

The story of this song’s ascent
into respectability is the story of the authentic coon song, not the
counterfeit produced in tin-pan alley by the commercial exploiters. The first
line informs the experienced ear whether the jazz composition is real or faked.
Few white men have been able to create the rag-time of the true quality,
although many have been skillful in adaptations of the tunes created by
nameless Negroes.

[1942] Frankie Baker photograph from the St. Louis Dispatch, February 13.

[Frankie Baker, the real life murderess who
achieved folk-fame through the topical ballad ‘Frankie and Albert (or Frankie
and Johnny)’ died in the mental wing of a hospital in Pendleton, Oregon on
January 10, 1952 age 75. In the early morning hours of October 16, 1899,
according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Frankie Baker shot Allen Britt “at
their quarters in the rear of Targee Street.” Baker was acquitted, having acted
in self-defense after Britt, who preferred “Albert” to Allen, threatened her
with a knife. Frankie was quoted in a newspaper as saying “That song got it all
wrong. It was just an old Harrington and Richardson .38 and I only shot once.”

The title was originally ‘Frankie and Albert’
and supposedly composed by one Jim Dooley (race unknown) of St. Louis. Jim
Dooley died in 1932. It was Tin Pan Alley songsters Ren Field and the Leighton
Brothers who adapted and copyrighted it as ‘Frankie and Johnny.’ ‘Frankie and
Albert’ probably began as a bawdy St. Louis whorehouse piano song (although
songsters with guitars entertained in the same establishments). Ed Cray
collected a large amount of filthy stanzas and recorded them in his book The
Erotic Muse, 1969, Oak Publications. One of the milder verses is:

Frankie went
looking for Johnny.

She hung out a
sign on the door:

“No more fish for
sale now,

Go find you
another whore.”

He was her man.

But he done her
wrong.

Some folklorists claimed the song was in
circulation before 1899 and was based on a similar St. Louis murder circa 1850.
Another says a song of that title was sung by white soldiers during the Civil
War of 1860-65. No doubt that the version we know today was based on Frankie
Baker’s murder of Allen Britt but the melody may be older.

The Leightons, young men yet, represent the only active
survivors of the pioneers in the discovery of jazz. With them less than two
decades ago were Hughie Cannon, Gutter Wilson, Johnny Queen and Ben Harney.

[Gutter Wilson was, I assume, Walter Wilson,
who supplied music to many Johnny Queen lyrics. There was an earlier Johnny
Queen, a banjo playing minstrel and comedian connected with Harrigan and Hart’s
theatre for many years. He died in February 1884. Harney’s ‘Mr.
Johnson Turn Me Loose’ is HERE,
‘Cakewalk in the Sky’ is HERE.
Bessie Smith recorded the song as well (HERE). Harney was from New Orleans and some
writers who knew him claimed he was passing for white.]

By what miracle of self-respect and good sense they avoided
the pitfalls which swallowed up many of their old comrades, they can’t explain.
Hughie Cannon, who wrote “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey” as a sequel to the
Leighton’s “Bill Bailey, Ain’t Dat a Shame,” died in the charity ward of a
hospital in Toledo before he was forty. Hughie’s songs, which netted publishers
tens of thousands, were sold by him in bar-rooms where he played the piano for
a living. A round of drinks for the house and a suit of clothes was the price
he received for “Goo-Goo Eyes,” the favorite of a season, and is still
remembered as the fore-runner of the deluge of coon songs.

[John Dobbs 1901 recording of ‘Goo-Goo Eyes’ HERE is quite similar to the tune of ‘Frankie
and Johnnie.’ Then of course, there was ‘Barney Google with the Goo-Goo-Googly
Eyes’ HERE.]

“Casey Jones” was given out by the Leighton’s. They frankly
admit that their work in connection with this classic consisted of selecting a
series of clean verses and standardizing a tune. Many of the Negro ballads
require a variation of the melody with each stanza, and change the refrain to
fit the unfolding of the story. They sold this song outright for $5,000. No one
ever identified the author of “Casey Jones.” He was undoubtedly a Negro engine
wiper in the railway yards of a Southern city in the United States. A haunting
tune and a verse or two start such a song in rirrulation (sic). Gifted ones add
to it; it grows from town to town; it produces off-shoots; it would die in a
few years if it were not preserved, expurgated, by a publisher. Two-thirds of
its character is lost, of course, when it becomes conventionalized.

[Vulgar lyrics to ‘Casey Jones’ can be found
in Ed Cray’s The Erotic Muse (1969). Sample:

Casey Jones was a son-of-a-bitch,

Drove a hot steam
engine through a forty foot ditch,

Pissed on the
whistle and he shit on the bell

And he went
through Chicago like a bat out of hell.

Ed Cray is also author of
“Ramblin’ Man, the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie.”]

Following are some of the songs the Leighton’s wrote which
became popular:

“Ain’t Dat a Shame.”

“Fare Thee Well, Honey, Fare Thee Well.”

“I Got Mine.”

“There’s a Dark Man Coming with a Bundle.”

‘Bill, You Done Me Wrong.”

“Casey Jones.”

“Steamboat Bill”

“Frankie and Johnnie.”

“Lonesome Blues.”

And numerous other songs which did not obtain such wide popularity.

(Frank and Burt Leighton are the earliest singers of “blues”
known in vaudeville. That type of song was their dependence almost as an act.
They have grown to be so strongly identified with “blues” it is expected of
them. Especially “Frankie and Johnnie,” mentioned by them in the above article.
But comparatively in recent vaudeville times were the “blues” a strange song
style to an audience. A minute percentage of the audience knew what it was all
about. The Leighton’s had to work harder in those days to get across the
“blues” than now, when almost all popular song-singing turns, even to sister
acts, are using one or more. The sister acts found the “blues” songs were easy
to harmonize).

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Cartoonist, illustrator, storyteller, born in Nelson, B.C. in May 1950, has contributed to Chronicle, Weirdom, and Visions fanzines. John illustrated ‘Ronald and the Dragon’ by Lawrie Peters in 1975. Email: adcock34@gmail.com